Tag Archives: PC

Much has been said about Thermaltake’s Level 10 GT case since its release back in January of 2011. And now it’s gone and gotten itself a shiny new army-style paint job “to evoke the “battle” spirit of being a gamer and its true representation.” That was enough to justify a new-ish name: meet the Level 10 GT Battle Edition. It’s still the same case as before though, and if you’ve never heard of it, here’s a quick primer:

So you might have heard about the Raspberry Pi, that deck-of-cards-sized $35 computer that runs Linux and has a Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, VideoCore IV GPU, and 256 Megabytes of RAM. It’s supposed to promote the use of computers in schools, but at that price point, people are grabbing it for all sorts of reasons. We hear it runs HD video just fine, even if it has to be stored on a separate SD card. Anyway, for $35 what you get is a pretty bare bones system, with no case. ModMyPi is selling just such a case, which comes in 5 different colour combinations. They’re made out of perforated ABS plastic, which should keep your Pi cool while keeping the dust out. They cost “£7.99 ($12.70) for the black or white versions. The other colors will cost an extra £1.99 ($3.15), as will international shipping. So the price ranges from $12.70 up to $18.99 depending on your selection and location. To sweeten the deal, ModMyPi will donate 5% of their profits to the Raspberry foundation.

Jeffrey Stephenson got a Mini-ITX case recently, and decided to put a lot of pretty things around it. Made from mahogany with aluminum accents, the Aerodyne has an Intel i3 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid state drive. Jeffrey decided that he’d make 5 to 10 of these and sell them, only on order. So you can contact him at jeffrey at slipperyskip.com and get some details. We’re too afraid to ask the price, but we did have fun wondering if we’d ever be able to make one ourselves (the truth? Heck no!). See, Jeffrey has made available over 150 photographs of the build; this is one intricate job.

Are you looking for a way to immerse yourself into your video games a bit more? We’re still a long way from virtual reality, but there are small things you can do to feel like a part of the game. One thing is to have the proper audio setup. Switching from stereo to a 5.1 surround sound setup can make a huge difference. Soon, you’ll even be able to add mood lighting to your PC games. That’s right, mood lighting.

Mad Catz has announced their new amBX devices, which provide ambient light in conjunction with whatever game you are playing. They can actually take lighting cues from the PC games that you’re playing, and give off the same colors that are being seen in the game. This takes the image from just being on the screen in front of you, and makes it a part of the entire room. Will this be the next big thing in gaming? We’ll see when the lights hit later this year.

When it comes to your gaming PC, getting the most bang for your buck(explosion out of your dollar) is of the utmost importance. For many, this means overclocking components such as the CPU and video card, to milk every last bit of performance from the hardware without paying anything extra. The downside to this is of course the additional heat generated from pushing your hardware to its limits.

So how do you keep your rig running cool without breaking the bank? Obviously upgrading your stock cooling system is going to be your first line of defense against heat. Now do you go with air cooling, or a liquid cooling setup? These days, I’m all for the latter. For a minimal increase in cost, you can greatly reduce not only the temperature of your components, but the noise as well.

If you’ve got a pretty beefy gaming PC that’s packed with hardware, chances are that you need to keep an eye on your cooling. After all, you don’t want to damage anything by inadvertently letting it overheat. Of course at the same time, if you’ve chosen to go with a strictly air-cooled solution, that can get pretty loud. What you need is a good way to tweak your fans to maintain the proper temperature, without simply cranking them all on high and forgetting about it.

NZXT has released several cases and stand-alone products that keep this in mind, however, their latest offering may very well be their best. The new Sentry LXE is a touchscreen LCD that shows information about your system’s temperature, and allows you to control your fans. While this isn’t something new exactly, this one sets itself apart by not being integrated into the computer case itself.

It’s no surprise that liquid cooling is growing in popularity, as your computer can realize greater potential while generally running much quieter than with traditional air cooling. We’ve seen a number of offerings from CoolIT, who have really shaken things up with their simple all-in-one CPU cooling systems. These have been great because not only are they simple to setup, but they tend to be compatible with most CPU platforms that are still in use today. Unfortunately if you want to apply the same great cooling solutions to your graphics card, you’ll be forced to buy an entire solution aimed at your specific card. When you go to upgrade, you’ll need to buy a brand new cooler as well. This is something that CoolIT has finally addressed with their OMNI A.L.C. system.

The system is comprised of three parts. First you have the universal OMNI water block, which essentially does all of the work. Second you have a universal liquid plate, which keeps the cooling liquid flowing over the interposer plate. This third piece is what attaches directly to your graphics card. Since they have made the interposer plate separate from the actual liquid plate, you can simply switch this piece out when you decide to upgrade your graphics card.

This is a PC. There’s no good reason why it’s a PC, but it’s a PC. Or if there IS a good reason why it’s a PC, there’s no good reason why it looks like this. From Artopz (“Technology In Design,” which is as literal a motto as I’ve ever seen) comes this series of three designer weird-ass desktop computers, each one of which is also a lamp.

A lamp!

As far as I can tell (and I can’t really tell), all of the PC bits are stuffed into the aluminum base, with the designer weird-ass lamp on top. The lamp is somehow connected to the PC in that it changes color depending on what the computer is doing, although it can also be controlled independently. The PC itself is decidedly lower midrange, with an Atom processor, 4 gigs of RAM, a DVD burner, and over 600 gigs of SSD storage. It comes with Windows 7 and no monitor, and you can buy one (after a seven week wait) starting at about $2500.

You think you got the biggest, fastest rig in town, don’t ya? Well lemme tell you, it ain’t got squat on the FASTRA II from the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp. That’s because this baby packs a whopping 13GPUs, from “six NVIDIA GTX295 dual-GPU cards, and one GTX275 single-GPU card, resulting in a massive 12TFLOPS of computing power.” Since the fine people at the University are using the machine for projects that are quite a bit more noble than gaming (think “3D imaging of bone tissue in mice, which is commonly required in medicine research for osteoporosis “), a massive CPU cluster is not required. So there’s a single Core i7 chip along with

an ASUS P6T7 WS mainboard to accommodate all seven video cards; one 1,500W power supply and three 450W supplies keep the extreme power demands in check. A 1TB Samsung hard drive, 12GB of DDR3 memory, and [a] Lian-Li case. The only modifications are a custom cage to suspend the GeForce boards and a custom kernel for the CentOS Linux build that runs the design.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.